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From Our Editors

Los Chilaquiles

Luis Barrea, the owner and head chef at Los Chilaquiles, traces his culinary journey back to his family’s kitchen. Even when he could barely reach the counter, Luis was learning how to craft enchiladas and tacos to please the discerning palates of his 10 brothers and sisters. Though he later studied at a professional academy, these early experiences did the most to shape his love for cooking. Today, he brings this love to every dish he makes at Los Chilaquiles.
Amidst crackling pans and sizzling grills, Luis and his chefs stuff meats and seafood into tacos and tortas that have earned praise from Chicago's Best. The real draw, however, is their eight different types of chilaquiles, which shower crispy corn tortilla chips with chocolaty mole and tequila-infused sauces. Salsas with varying degrees of spiciness accompany each dish—beware of the ultra-hot diablo salsa, which Luis painstakingly extracts from volcanic lava.

Groupon Guide

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The cast of characters at El Rey (4157 S. California Ave.) is a good indication of what an important hub it is in the neighborhood. Below, we meet a few of its principal actors.
REY MACIAS: Macias runs the place. His parents own it, but he says they “don’t always want to hear about it.”
TEACHERS: Macias went to school at Kelly High School, directly across the street from El Rey in Brighton Park.
When he first started working at the restaurant five years ago, his old English teacher came in. “‘Ms. Johnson, remember me?” he joked. “Why’d you fail me? Listen to my accent, I could've been president.”
Now, many of the teachers from Kelly come in, and he tries to look out for them. He says he carried a sign with them during the strike in 2013, and they fill the back patio during fundraisers and special events.
ALDERMAN CARDENAS: George Cardenas named El Rey his favorite eatery in the 12th Ward. When the alderman stops in for lunch, he jokingly asks, “Where are the margaritas?”
“Sorry, sir,” Macias will reply, “but the alderman won’t let us serve them so close to the school.”
COPS: El Rey doesn’t really match up with the slick diners where I imagine cops eat. But there they are, at least a dozen plainclothes detectives swapping stories that sound straight out of The Wire and a handful of uniformed officers in the corner looking at them shyly. Occasionally one of the cops will attempt an order in Spanish, impressing his compatriots around the table.
“We love our officers,” Macias says.
They don’t just get free coffee. Macias says the restaurant used to close at 10 p.m., but he would sometimes see a disappointed patrolman outside at 10:10 p.m.. So he started staying open until 11 p.m. And then midnight. Now El Rey closes at 5 a.m.
Macias says a friend once asked him if you had to be a cop to get great service here. “No,” he told him, “you just have to have a .45 in your pocket!”
He’s proud that they hang out here, though—his grandmother always told him you could identify a good restaurant by the police cruisers outside.
CONTRACTORS: “I started doing construction when I was 10,” Macias says. He built an addition to the restaurant himself and did much of the work on the interior.
Before cutting wood for new booths, he went with one of his contracting buddies to secretly measure the tables at Portillo’s. They got caught and had to fib to the skeptical waiter: “We made a bet about how wide your tables were.”
One old construction boss, who Macias calls Inspector Gadget, only ever wanted the chicken burrito. Macias finally told a waitress to tell him they were out of tortillas (which El Rey makes in house). Inspector Gadget tried something new, venturing off into a surprisingly thick menu that includes everything from tacos with cesos (brain) and lengua (tongue) to gringas. Gringas?
“Oh, you don’t know what a gringa is?” asks Macias, his eyes wide.
“In Aguascalientes [in Mexico], there’s a big festival; offices shut down for a week,” he says. “And at the end of the night, all the guys say they’re going to get some gringas.” Macias was confused too until he saw what they were actually talking about: marinated pork, onions, and cheese wrapped in pristine white flour tortillas (which give the dish its name).
The cooks at El Rey also make a soup I’d never seen before, with a name that literally just means “meat in juice.” It was at least as rich as a good pho, and I can imagine even someone with a taste for simple burritos loving it.
The menu also includes tacos botaneros and tacos chilangos, both of which have lengthy backstories that are worth asking Macias about if you have half an hour to kill.
STUDENTS: Macias identifies with the kids in Brighton Park. After all, he used to go to school there, walking home through the neighborhood so he could pocket the bus fare his parents gave him.
He gives students cheap lunches and runs a work-study program. The students are part of the reason the walls are plastered with stars of ‘60s Mexican cinema, too—he seems worried they’ll grow up with posters of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. He points out Antonio Aguilar (“he was kind of the horse guy”), Jorge Negrete (“so tough and handsome”), and Pedro Armendáriz (“he made movies with John Wayne”).
When he starts talking about María Féliz, a middle-aged woman leaves her table at the restaurant to affirm that Feliz did not indeed “take any crap from guys.” Nor did Frida Kahlo, who, Macias hypothesizes, may have actually liked ladies more than men.
The wall seems carefully curated, both to educate a younger generation and to delight Macias. But the wall itself is actually in constant flux.
“I have thousands of these photos in my office; I change them all once in a while,” he says.
EVERYONE ELSE: Macias doesn’t have an unkind word for anyone (with the exception of a certain Chicago celebrity chef, who Macias says steals recipes from small Mexican towns), and El Rey is an almost overwhelmingly hospitable place. I tried to leave there empty-handed. Instead I was eating leftovers from the bag Macias packed me for days afterward.
It can be hard to separate kindness and savvy in businessmen, but Macias seems to genuinely care about his neighbors. He feeds the occasional drunk or homeless person or kid with a tough family—or really just anyone—if he’s feeling generous.
“God is watching,” Macias says. “If you do good, he’ll do good to you.”
Photos by Nathalie Lagerfeld, Groupon

Inside the cramped kitchen at Taco Joint’s River North location (158 W. Ontario St.), Ofelia Rojo makes tortillas. But to reduce her role as a “tortilla lady” to that seemingly simple action would obfuscate the true extent of what her job requires.
Namely, spending her entire shift in front of a searing-hot flat-top grill, an industrial-size behemoth that’s been known to inflict burns on anyone who just happens to be standing too close to it. It’s here that Ofelia creates each tortilla one at a time. Over the course of their day, she and her fellow tortilla lady will press and cook some 500 tortillas.
Five hundred tortillas. By hand. One at a time.
Thanks to their careful and tireless technique, the tortilla ladies deliver the freshest tortillas possible—with consistently delicious results. Unlike others out there, Taco Joint’s tortillas never dry out or harden at the edges.
So to find out how they do it, I joined shift manager Alfredo “Al” Arteaga to follow Ofelia’s process from start to finish. Along the way, I learned the five steps that make up the secret behind these magical disks—along with some inspiration for improving my own technique.
1. Surprise Ingredient
Tortillas usually contain three ingredients: masa (also known as corn flour), water, and salt. At least, that’s what the back of the masa package would have you believe—and why the tortillas I make at home have always seemed so dry. At Taco Joint, however, Ofelia also includes corn oil, which adds moisture to the dough. The resulting tortilla retains its softness even as it cools down.
2. Naturally Colorful
Taco Joint adds another special touch to its tortillas—color. Natural, food-based ingredients, such as the poblanos and spinach for this batch, provide a fun touch. The hues rotate daily; on Monday, for example, Ofelia would add black-bean purée to her dough for an almost blue-colored tortilla.
3. Mixing It Up
Using a wide-bowled electric mixer, Ofelia combines the colorful liquid she just blended with masa and water, eyeballing the liquid amount till the consistency looks right. The final mixture looks a bit like play-doh.
4. The Right Touch
Now it’s time for Ofelia to form and cook the tortillas. Ofelia places a dough ball in a cast-iron press and applies just the right amount of pressure to flatten it into a still-thick disk. At home, I’ve been squeezing as hard as my own press will let me, resulting in tortillas that are crumbly and dry.
5. Made to Order
One at a time, Ofelia presses dough balls and lays them on the flat top. Drawing on an inner timer, she flips them over by hand, watching for them to start to puff up. Turning them over one more time, she pulls each tortilla off the grill and deposits it into a waiting cooler. She makes just a few at a time, enough for the line cooks to get started, replenishing their supply throughout her shift. This ensures that the tortillas stay warm, soft, and moist.
Final Thoughts
Watching Ofelia’s process, I was surprised by how much just a few tweaks in a recipe or technique can affect the end product. Adding oil and using a softer hand when pressing the dough had never occurred to me, yet these two small changes elevate Taco Joint’s tortillas into a different stratosphere.
With these tricks up my sleeve, I anticipate much better results at home. Let’s be honest, though: imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but when Taco Joint is dishing up such mouthwatering made-to-order tacos so close to my home and office, I don’t see too much of a need to reinvent the corn-flour wheel.
Video and Photo credit: Corey Wills, Groupon

To most people, a tamale is one thing: a steamy bundle of corn masa wrapped in a cornhusk. But Jorge Miranda, chef at the Chicago Mexican restaurant Chilapan, knows better. “You can make a tamale out of almost anything,” he said.
Growing up in Mexico City, Jorge learned to cook from his grandmothers, one of whom hailed from the southern state of Michoacán. She wrapped her tamales with the leaves of maguey, the same plant used to make tequila and mescal. Maguey gives the masa a minty, anise-like taste. “It’s really good, but it’s different,” Jorge said.
Tamale shapes and fillings also vary. Another Michoacán specialty is the corunda—a cornhusk tamale in a triangle shape. In Guerrero, where Jorge’s other grandmother is from, people still make tamales nejos—tamales stuffed with pure corn masa, without any meat filling or extra fat. The ancient Aztecs often ate this type of tamale while on long journeys.
Tamales used to be easier to find in his neighborhood, Jorge said. “When I came to the US in 1991, there were tamales all over the place. You’d just go outside your apartment and there was someone selling them,” he said. Thirty years later, these tamale street vendors are much fewer and farther between—in swiftly gentrifying Logan Square at least.
Jorge has a solution to the local tamale drought: in August, he plans to start selling tamales at a takeout window in the mornings, alongside horchata, jamaica, and other snacks. In keeping with his restaurant’s eclecticism and his diverse roots, Jorge’s tamale menu won’t draw on any one regional cuisine.
Inside Chilapan’s brightly painted dining room, he took us through the steps of making one of his more exotic varieties of tamales. Though the southern state of Oaxaca is probably best known for its complex, heavily spiced moles, its unique tamales are a regional specialty, too. Wrapped in banana leaves instead of the usual cornhusks, they acquire an earthy, herb-like taste that feels appropriate for a rustic, home-cooked meal. Look for this Oaxacan variety and others at the tamale window.
How to Make a Oaxacan Tamale
The masa: A key ingredient in Mexican cooking, masa is a dough made from ground corn that has been treated with water and lime. Like many chefs, Jorge moistens his masa with a fat, such as lard or vegetable shortening, before pouring it onto the tamale wrapper. Each tamale should be about 60% masa, 40% filling, Jorge said.
The filling: You can fill a tamale with almost anything. Here, Jorge has chosen cochinita pibil—Mexican pulled pork. It’s not particularly Oaxacan—the dish actually originates farther east, in Yucatán—but its rich, slightly sweet flavor is a good match for the earthiness of the banana leaf. Just like the masa, cochinita pibil takes a while to prepare. After soaking the pork in a marinade made with achiote, he packs it into a roasting pan with banana leaves, pineapples, and oranges and cooks it slowly in the oven for four hours at 250 degrees. The result is incredibly tender, easy-to-shred meat.
The wrapping: Banana leaves are more brittle than cornhusks and crack easily, so they can’t be bundled into the usual tamale shape. Instead, Jorge folds them into rectangular packages, as if they were birthday gifts, and ties them with stray leaf strips.
Cooking and serving: Compared to cornhusk tamales, Oaxacan-style tamales take slightly longer to cook. Once he has a few finished tamales, Jorge puts them in a pot filled with a little water and steams them for about an hour. To serve, the kitchen staff unwraps the bundles and tops them with pickled red onions and drizzles of salsa and sour cream.
Photo and video by Andrew Nawrocki, Groupon. Music: "Playtime" by Jahzzar, under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
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